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Book 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



POEMS 



•The 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



POEMS 



BY 

MRS. SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1910 

All rights reserved 






Copyright, 1910, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electeotyped. Published October, 1910. 



Notiwooti 3J)r«J8 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



>CU 273497 



^ 

A 



For permission to reprint a number of these poems, 
some of which appeared with the signature '« Lydia Schuy- 
ler, ' ' the author is indebted to the courtesy of the editors 
and publishers of the American Magazine, the Atlantic 
Monthly, the Century Magazine, Everybody 1 s Magazine, 
Harper* ' s Bazar, Harper's Magazine, the North Ameri- 
can Review, and Putnam's Monthly. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Ode to a Greek Head called Aphrodite . . 3 
SONGS 

— In One Sole Place 15 

-—A Song for Twilight 16 

The Dream-Spirit Sings . . • . .18 

Love's Prisoner 20 

Healing 21 

Four Winds 22 

Vigil 23 

Cradle Song 24 

The Sisters 26 

Give Back, said Love 28 

Trysts 29 

Shut Out 30 

Tribute ■ . . .32 

-The Rolling Earth 33 

Kreisler's Violin 37 

The Builders of Renown 53 

Napoleon II 56 

In Lower New York 58 

May Roses: Como 59 

The Question . . . . . . . .60 

Our Dust . 61 

Her Calendar 62 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Psalm for October 64 

The Garden of the Wind 68 

Spring on Long Island 72 

The Children's Heritage 74 

At Sea 75 

A Garden in the Fern 76 

Cherokee Roses 78 

When it is Dark 80 

At a Child's Grave 81 

The Child's Dream . 82 

Apple Blossoms and the Child 84 

Tommy's Playmates 87 

Sunrise by the Sea 89 

The Old Oak 90 

Initiation 92 

The Sunset Shore 93 

Learn of the Earth -97 

A Letter from the Low Land 101 

June 104 

A Night in May 105 

Content . 106 

Our Kingdom 107 

To her Lover 108 

Take Heed 109 

Hearthstones no 

Listen, My Sister 112 

If Great Love Die 114 

A Warning 115 

Two Spirits 116 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

Rewards .118 

The Cup and the Wine 119 

An Epitaph 120 

The Poet 121 

The Player and his Violin 124 

To her Poet 127 

The Seed and the Flower 128 

IN MEMORIAM 

My House (Richard Watson Gilder, Novem- 
ber, 1909) 133 

Say not thou art Content 137 

His Grave who loved the Sea (1894) . . 138 



ODE 

TO A GREEK HEAD CALLED 

APHRODITE 



ODE 
TO A GREEK HEAD CALLED 
APHRODITE 

(In the Museum of Fine Arts at Boston) 

Cold is the day, a northern day and darkly cold, 

The daylight drowned in snow. 
The singer heeds not, for his eyes and heart behold 

Beauty's high lamp aglow. 

Thou lovely waif from mellower time and clime than 
ours, 
Give ear to his low plea: 
Grant him a breath from the one field that bore such 
flowers — 
Thy prototype and thee. 

Not Aphrodite, though they name thee so. 
Thine eyes are misted crescent moons below 
The white cloud of thy brow, 
But hers are stars — clear and elate 
Like the bright Twins that once were Leda's sons, 

Or passionate 
As Betelgeuze and Bellatrix of martial name 
Who in his shoulders flame 
3 



4 ODE TO A GREEK HEAD 

Where the huge Hunter through the midnight runs. 

Her lips are tools of destiny : 
Forever newly they accord, refuse, invite, 
Deep dangers of delight ; 
Thine but imagine tremulously. 
And, many though her moods, she knoweth not 
the one 
That woos us to this stone 
Wherein thou livest passionless, 
Immortal in a vision-haunted wistfulness. 

Not Aphrodite, nor of race divine 
Another, bidding worship such as mine 
Come never nearer than the dust beneath her 
tread. 
A girl from golden years long dead, 
A maid unknown, unnamed, here survives, 
Rescued in this 
Fair chrysalis 
From a far ruined world whose shore 
Shows dense with formless shadows of lost lives, 
Lost and forevermore forgot, forevermore. 

Thou, only, saved ! — and yet not thou, not thou ! 
Only the line 
Of cheek and brow, 
The curves of eyelid, lip, and chin, 



ODE TO A GREEK HEAD 5 

The delicate languor of the head's incline, 
The rippling of the soft and heavy hair ; 

And, shrined their purity within, 
Veiled and elusive yet imperishably there, 
In reverence to be read as on some sacred scroll, 

The signet-markings of the soul. 

How shall we trace the clue to thy sweet mystery ? 

We fancy thee as one who grieves 
For the soft stirring of gray olive leaves, 
And yellow jonquils underneath the olive tree, 
And for the high clear lines of shaft and archi- 
trave, 
For lifted walls serene in beauty won 

From chiselled form and pattern, brave 
With brazen shields where break the arrows of the 
sun. 
A first quick fancy ! But we know, 
Shut here in arid walls beneath a cold 
And alien sky, 
Thou art not yearning for the land 
Thy home. For even as we to-day behold 
And worship, even so 
His eyes beheld whose hand, 
From exquisite flesh that needs must die, 

To marble of immortality 
Transferred thy spirit while were thine 



6 ODE TO A GREEK HEAD 

Olive and ivy, laurel and the vine 

In varying companionship accordant met, 

Far hills' unchanging rhythm of undulate line 

And changing rhapsodies of purple hue, 

And shining fanes on bare and sunny headlands set 

Between the darker and the paler blue. 

Not these the loadstone of thy wishful gaze. 
Now, even as when the sculptor sought in thee 
A guide to beauty's verity, 

Inward it turns always. 
And who shall follow ? Where the path 
Into the sanctuary of a soul that hath 
The walls of piled centuries for guard ? 
Long have I loved and pondered ; keeping pa- 
tient watch, 
Long have I waited, as though unawares to catch 
A voice soft-whispering beneath 

The impenetrable sheath 
Marmorean. And I hear no word. 
I only know that in thine own heart lay 
The clouds that dimmed for thee the brilliance 

of the day. 
Not throes of empire shadowed thus the joyous- 

ness 
Of thy young years ; not cities' leaguered long 
distress, 



ODE TO A GREEK HEAD 7 

Lost armies, argosies a-wreck, or heroes' fate, 
Crushed to a splendid death by their own glory's 

weight. 
In thee alone it lives, the gentle grief, 

The tender burden of desire 

That finds in dreams a half-relief, 
But would not weep lest falling tear on tear 

Lessen the burning of a fire 
Than any calming touch more intimately dear. 

The hurt we know not, but we know 
Never it pierced the shield of innocence below, 
To the immaculate deep core of maidenhood. 

Thy rosaries 
Of fond remembering with but pearls are strung ; 
The roses of delight whereon thy longings brood 
Thy virgin vision sees 
Unsullied lily-fields among. 
— Ay, but they budded once in crimson wealth 

to blow 
And fervent fragrance, all ungarnered though they 
died. 
Not thine a claustral chastity 
That had denied 
To answering love its happy seignory. 
Not by thine own free choosing was withheld 
The passionate whole 



8 ODE TO A GREEK HEAD 

Of woman's dower; not thine own will but fate, 
Implacable thy feet compelled 
To turn thee from the gate 
Of motherhood, to the enkindled soul 

Refused the body's mate, 
And bade the stirred heart live — ah, how re- 
luctantly ! — 
Betrothed forever to virginity. 

How are we parted, thou and I ! What miles of 

space, 
What irretraceable far miles of time, 

Dissever from thy face 
The eyes that crave so to have seen its living prime! 
Even the pole-star, to our sense 
Symbol and proof of permanence, 
Hath journeyed, so were multiplied the years, 

Unto the pilot place 
He held not for seafarers of thy race ; 
And on the scintillant highway of the zodiac 
The sun hath tired and fallen back; 
No longer he appears, 
Punctual, in the appointed star-framed houses 
where, 
When ancient wisdom sought him there 
As solstice or as equinox returned, 
His dazzling signal burned. 



ODE TO A GREEK HEAD g 

Thou art the elder by how much ! Yet young, 

so young — 
As though the birds of dawn had by thy cradle 
sung 

When I long since had learned to bear 
The burdens of the laboring day. So long, 
Long dead ! Yet still a woman-child among 
The living generations, and alive 
With such an animate flame as shall survive 
When we who breathe to-day are in our turn 

Tenants of perished graves ; ay, sure — 

Voiceless and yet how eloquent ! — 

Ageless, unaltering, to endure 
Till unborn centuries shall of thy witness learn 
Not time but beauty is the arm plenipotent. 

And now, to-day, leaning thine ear 
So gently, it must be that thou canst hear 
How I, a wandering singer, plead to thee. 

Quicken my timid minstrelsy : 
Show me in dreams what memories hold thy 
long 
And tender gazing, 
That, woven in my song, 
They thrill it to a tenderer phrasing ; 
Let visions of thy visions of young love 
To purest cadences my passion move ; 



io ODE TO A GREEK HEAD 

Interpret the sweet patience of such pain 

As stirs to ardencies of love again ; 

Interpret innocence, and youth, and April's 

breath, 
The powerlessness of time, the impotence of 

death. 
To the high deities for my sake pray 
Who choose and use us as they will : prevail that 

they 
With joys and tears prepare the seed-beds of my 

heart, 
Winnow with chastening winds the harvests of 

my soul, 
Touch my chill lips with the white coal 

Of truth, and clarify my sight 
Upward to follow where the guiding light 
Streams from the torch of art. 

So shall I sing, albeit with muted notes, as sing, 

Celestial clear, 
The musical fair meanings of thy face ; 

So to the eye, the ear, 
Of spirits straying in a dumb and darkened place 

My melody shall bring 
Echoes, if only faint and far, 
Of brooks and birds and sun-rays of the spring; 
So shall it lave them in a halcyon air, 



ODE TO A GREEK HEAD n 

Lead them with banners as of moon and morn- 
ing star ; 

Lull them to rest ; 
In the numb breast 
Unseal the fountains of emotion ; 
Soothe the tempestuous mood 
And quell 
The headstrong insurrection of the blood 
With balm of poesy's ablution, 

And the sure anodyne 
Of harp-strings touched to chords that tell 
What thou hast told this burning heart of mine, 
Daughter of earth and voice of the divine ! 
1909. 



SONGS 



IN ONE SOLE PLACE 

In one sole place a rose should blossom now 

That thou art dead ; 
Out of thy grave alone its stem should grow, 
Should spring its lovely head ; 
No other spot on earth 
Merits its birth. 

And when the moon is waxing slowly bright 

I say, Nowhere 
But on thy grave should fall its silvery light ; 
And gentle birds should there, 
There only, come to sing 
The tales of spring. 

If thus the beauty of the world might be 

Amassed and kept, 
Then in that place I think that I should see 
Thee, thee whom I have wept, 
And, grief forborne awhile, 
Dare then to smile. 



IS 



A SONG FOR TWILIGHT 

As sweet as purple dusk, as fair 

As morning shaking out her clouds of sunny hair, 

So sweet, so fair, art thou. 
Ah, no — not now. 

I had forgotten — no, not now ! 

This was thy likeness in the days 
When all the world seemed singing songs that 
were thy praise. 
Thy heart was sweet and soft, 

Thy face how oft 
I thought the dawning light — how oft ! 

Now, should another lover ask, 
Thy heart but as a stone, thy face but as a mask, 
I needs must paint, and say, 

Ah, not to-day, 
Ah, ask no more, no more, to-day ! 
16 



A SONG FOR TWILIGHT 17 

Only when now and then I dream 
A moment (and forget), thy heart, thy glances, 
seem 
So fair and sweet once more 

That as before 
I love thee, love thee — as before ! 



THE DREAM-SPIRIT SINGS 

Sleep — yet wake ! 

Come with me 
Though thy feet quit not thy bed. 

We shall take, 

Buoyantly, 
Roads with glamour overspread. 

Sleep — yet wake ! 

Ope thine eyes, 
Though their lids shall not unclose, 

Where I make 

Paradise 
That no daytime vision shows. 

Drawing now 

Cloud-wreaths back 
From the world of might-have-been, 

I shall go 

On a track 
Only by thy longings seen. 



THE DREAM-SPIRIT SINGS i 9 

Follow me : 

I will lead 
Where denial speaketh not ; 

Thou shalt be 

Wholly freed 
From the limits of thy lot. 

Though the light 

Mock thy woe 
Until e'en thy longings tire, 

In the night, 

Journeying so, 
Thou shalt clasp thy soul's desire. 



LOVE'S PRISONER 

Sweet Love has twined his fingers in my hair, 
And laid his hand across my wondering eyes. 
I cannot move save in the narrow space 

Of his strong arms' embrace, 
Nor see but only in my own heart where 
His image lies. 
How can I tell, 

Emprisoned so well, 
If in the outer world be sunset or sunrise ? 
Sweet Love has laid his hand across my eyes. 

Sweet Love has loosed his fingers from my hair, 
His lifted hand has left my eyelids wet. 
I cannot move save to pursue his fleet 

And unreturning feet, 
Nor see but in my ruined heart, and there 
His face lies yet. 
How should I know, 

Distraught and blinded so, 
If in the outer world be sunrise or sunset ? 
Sweet Love has freed my eyes, but they are wet. 



HEALING 

The very stars shook in the sky, 
The north wind stormed so fierce and loud ; 
So fast it ran, the moon swept by, 
A drowning face, in floods of cloud — 
So fast, so cold, that the midnight 
Was full of dreams of wild affright. 
{Love, did I lose thee in the terror of the night?) 

Oh, none the less there comes again 

A moon so purely white and still 

The stars remit their shining, fain 

That hers may work its silvery will, 
And winds so soft the daybreak hour 
Buds to their kiss, a roseate flower. 

{Love, I have seen thee, found thee, in the rose-red 
hour!) 



FOUR WINDS 

Jubilant sounded on my marriage-morn 

The west wind's feet ; 
The south wind, the soft night my babe was born, 

Sang low and sweet ; 
Above two open graves the east wind blew 

His wailing blast ; 
The north wind calls now I am passing too, 

At last, at last. 

Blow strong, blow swift, and on thy ■pinions bear 
My soul that it may find them both — somewhere ! 



VIGIL 

A cloudless stretch of yellow sky, 
(The wide world's western rim), 

And, scintillant, one star on high. 
Bright star, hast thou seen him ? 

He wandered very long ago. 

I cannot make a quest, 
For where to seek I should not know 

In all that shining west. 

The ones who loved him once are dead 

I, only, cared to wait. 
Keep vigil, Venus, overhead ; 

I watch the open gate. 



23 



CRADLE SONG 

How do we know 

How the seasons go ? 
By white of the blossoms and white of the snow, 

By yellow of wheat 

And the hurrying beat 
On yellowing boughs of the rain-storm's feet. 

What is so bright 

In the midmost night ? 
The moon with her banner of glittering light ; 

And when she goes by, 

In the dark-blue sky, 
A million and one, the stars climb high : 

Lion and Bear, 

The Crown and the Chair, 
The Hunter and Dog, the Cross and the Square ; 

The Dragon outspread, 

Arcturus so red, 
And the eye that burns hot in the Bull's great head. 

What of the rose 
When the night wind blows ? 
She dreams little poems that nobody knows, 
24 



CRADLE SONG 25 

And into the ear 
Of the lily-bud near 
She sings little melodies no one can hear. 

Slumber, my love, 

To the coo of the dove 
And the croon of the breeze in the branches above ; 

Sleep till the sun 

His sleeping has done, 
And the stars run away from him one after one. 

Long not to be 

With the birds in the tree 
To swing in the wind — it is safer with me ; 

Slumber is best 

In the nursery nest, 
And my arms are as warm as the mother-bird's 
breast. 



THE SISTERS 

i 

Says the wind, I cannot find her, 
And the house, I cannot bind her. 
Birds can fly less fast than she, 
Thistledown less tauntingly. 
And when vapors veil the sun, 
Then her rapid race is run, 
And the falling raindrops lave 
All she leaves us — just her grave. 

Nay, that is not really she, 
'Tis her sister, Gayety. 

ii 
She, the true one, does not wander, 
Seeketh not what lies beyond her ; 
Vagrant paths her footsteps shun, 
And the boldness of the sun. 

26 



THE SISTERS 27 

Rovers never share her smile, 
Yet she smileth all the while, 
And when dusk and raindrops come, 
Still she sitteth in my home. 

Gayety, how art thou less 
Than thy sister, Happiness. 



GIVE BACK, SAID LOVE 

Give back, said Love, give back my stars and 

flowers, 
Yield me my roses, cease thy summer song ; 
Prepare thy heart for dark and rainful hours ; 
Take these my thorns — for thou hast joyed too 

long. 

Give me thy thorns, I cried, thy stormy rain, 
Take all the roses in thy gardens grown ; 
Take the sweet stars, give me thy thorns of pain ; 
Give what thou wilt — if but it be thine own. 



28 



TRYSTS 

The clock strikes twelve to mark the tryst 
To-day and young To-morrow keep ; 
Their eyes have met, their lips have kissed, 
While we two watch, all else asleep. 

Now, though this newly born To-day, 
That was To-morrow, soon must set 
The drowsy sun upon its way 
And wake the world its bread to get — 

The toil of man, what matters it ? 
Or when the dawn shall break, or how ? 
It matters only that we sit, 
All else asleep, together now. 

And when this young To-day, grown old, 
Another Morrow turns to see, 
Again shall happy vigil hold 
My clock and I, awaiting thee. 



29 



SHUT OUT 

i 
O Love, why hast thou flown ? 

Here is a heart, 
Its doors set wide apart 
To welcome thee ; it is thy home, thine own. 

ii 
O Heart, why dost thou call ? 

I have my wings, 
And many a lurer sings. 
How can I give to one the meed of all ? 

in 
Then, Love, I shut my door. 

Thou shalt not come ; 
Here is not now thy home ; 
The fires die down, the lights shall burn no more. 

IV 

Nay, Heart, I come again ! 

I tire of flight ; 
Open thy door to-night ; 
I lie without, in loneliness and pain. 
30 



SHUT OUT 31 

V 
Nay, Love, it cannot be ! 

My house is cold, 
And so I needs must hold 
Close shut the door that bars thee out from me. 



TRIBUTE 

O love, when thou sittest at home there must 

verily be 
A silence outdoors, a stillness of waiting for thee. 

For look : when thou comest, all things that can 

tremble or move 
Are stirring to show it is thou, it is thou, whom 

they love. 

The whisper of pines and the thrill of the slender 

birch-tree, 
They tell thou art smiling, they call to the forest 

to see; 

The ripples that flow on the brookside, they fol- 
low thy feet, 

To touch thy white raiment the wind runneth 
over the wheat; 

The grasses are swaying like waves to be near 

where thou art, 
The rose lifts its bud in the hope of a place on thy 

heart. 

O love ! — and my own heart would faint and 

lie still and lie dead, 
If never again it could feel the sweet weight of 

thy head ! 

32 



THE ROLLING EARTH 

Tired of the star-shine, impatient of noon, 
Rushing through dawn on a search for the moon, 
Craving the daytime, desiring the night, 
Ever I flee from the dark, from the light. 
Questing the seasons I circle the sun : 
Boreas wearies me — winter, have done ! 
Zephyr in vain lays his touch on my breast, 
Autumn allureth — nay, winter is best ! 

Children of men, whom I brought unto birth, 
Hope not for peace who are dust of the 
earth. 



33 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

i 

Lost to all guidance save the longing of the ear, 
Asleep in all save in the need to hear, 
Nathless we know, 
Now has begun 
The miracle-working of the slender bow, 
How touches of cool water through the fingers 

run, 
How thickets of the Maytime paradisal odors 

yield ; 
There blows a breath from childhood's clover- 
field ; 

And on the swaying tapestry 
Of iris-colored tone and tune 
Visions unroll, that change and change to be 
But more and more the eye's felicity. 

ii 
Hast thou seen the far and passionless faint moon 
Aloof in the high dome of afternoon ? 

37 



38 KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

No orbed world, no sister to the solid spheres, 
But on the solid blue a film of snow, 
On azure seas a nautilus sail, 
Than the small drifting cloud more frail 

And more imponderable she appears, 
As floats some tenuous melody the bow 
Seemeth on gossamer strands invisible to 
weave, 

Daring awhile to leave 
Untouched the palpable and eager strings. 
But as the thin pale disk shows dense and golden- 
bright 
When the dusk comes and the red sunset is 

alight, 
As it shines clarion-clear and silver-white 

Riding the purple arches of midnight, 
So the dim strain 
Draws deeper breath, more luminously rings. 
Caught up and poured upon the air again 
By vibrant cord and resonant wood, it grows 

To limpid splendor, glows 
With argent radiance, floods and fills 
With love desirous all the hollows of the slum- 
brous hills 
Where sleeps . . . where sleeps on Latmos . . . 

lo ! Selene slips 
From her pure crescent to Endymion's lips ! 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 39 

Hast thou seen the shimmer of the galaxy 
When the metallic notes fall glitteringly, 
Sparkles of gold by wing-tips of melodic swift- 
ness shed ? 
Hast thou known the prouder afflux, arc on arc, 
Of greater and more fervid stars mounting the 
fervent dark ? — 

Altair and crystal Sirius, 
Vega the sapphire and Aldebaran stormy red, 
Alcyone, Antares, Regulus, 
Mira, Denebola — the magic of the name, 
The lustre of the flame, 
The soaring of the music, one, the same. 
Then slower still and mightier the celestial path- 
way tread 
Majestic clustered suns in measures unadorned, 
Balanced, reiterate, as though they yearned 
For the immutable of motion ; and outspread 
Above the world's high crest, 
Where is not east or west, 
They find the heavens of their desire : 
Polaris hangs o'erhead, 
A central fire, 
And round and round the bowl 
Of adamantine skies, 
Choiring unalterably, the constellations roll 
In level course, nor ever set nor ever rise. 



40 KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

ill 

Oh, unconvincing eyes that urge 
The wondering ear to think this protean surge 
Of beauty hath its fountain-head within 
A little curved case by mortal skill 

Built of the pine-tree's wood ! 

Hearken again ! When that it will 

Speak airily, this violin, 

Sweetly and lightly, delicately low, 
Not even Ariel could 

Compel a singing whisper so ; 

But, dreaming where a zephyr stirs 
The blossomy grass at rosy break of day, 
Thus Ariel on its tremulous dulcimers 
Might hear the nodding wind-flowers play. 

When now the spirit that abides within 
The fragile body of the violin 
Spreadeth its pinions and cries dauntlessly, 
Trumpet nor fife could brace the heart to see 

More surely compassed victory. 
Yet tender can it once more make its touch 

To press, to press not overmuch, 
The chords of pathos that lie near to pain, 
By its caresses to bring comforting again. 



/ 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 41 

Idyl and pastoral 
Of nest and leafy tree it hath in store, 
The pibrochs of the windy rain, 

The lulling strain 
Of rivulet and waterfall. 
And oft it speaks in music never writ, 

Nor heard before, 
But fancy-feigned upon fair mouth or instrument 

Devised to seem to utter it — 
Music implicit in the carven stone, the mellow 
paint, 
Where seraph, minstrel, virgin saint, 
Or infant innocent, 
Laudeth true love or heavenly things. 
By the sole witness of this violin we know 
How one and how another fingers, loud or low, 
Cithern or flute or harp, or raptly sings : 
Far alleluias peal as, amber, purple, crimson, 

pass 
Angels awakened in the pictured glass ; 
Slim portal guardians from the gray mid-ages lift 
the voice 

Of meek beatitude ; Titian, Bellini, 
Imaged this treble gladness where rejoice, 
Adoringly, their half-divine bambini ; 
Giorgione's plumed singer finds the word 
That answers to the monk's clear harpsichord ; 



42 KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

Vocal in turn are all the rich-robed figures of the 

choir 

Van Eyck beheld as once they tried, 
Bent-browed and earnest-eyed, 
To follow higher, higher, 
The leading of the organ pipes ; and sweetly 

sacred joys 
Flow from the parted lips of Delia Robbia's 

boys. 
Great is the company of such as these, 
At the magician's call who find release 
From the enchanted stillness where they live 

Endeavoring melodious utterance — 

Until he spoke, interpretive, 
Their only tongue their beauty's resonance. 

Nor is there haunted spot 

Of old romance 
Wherein this player gleaneth not 
New wealth of dulcet jouissance. 
Up from Miranda's seabeach blown, 
From out Armida's garden, 
From Eden, Arcady, or Arden 
(He with his viol standing there alone), 
Even unto us there comes a thrill, a witchery, 

Of such ebullient euphony 
That, after, in our temples throb and chime, 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 43 

All day awake, all night adream, 
Soft broken harmonies that seem 
Tales that await the telling in some unfound 
faery clime. 

IV 

Triune the arts that so avail, 
In the enchanter's small divine 

Alembic, flame and wine 
And honey-dew to gather and distill, 
His lyric chalices to fill 

And pour for our regale. 

One there has been 
That through long ages shaped and tuned the 
violin, 

Since the swart savage, fashioning 
The sinew-cord that his rude weapon bound, 

Stone head to handle, found, 
Sudden, a novel joy — plucked a taut string 

And laughed to hear it sing. 
Chance at the outset, but the end the meed 
Of exquisite labor, slowly garnered skill, 
Tending with happy patience the minute 
And accidental seed, 
Devoutly passing on, 
A hundred centuries, from sire to son, 



44 KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

The blossoming plant of promise till 
The ultimate fruit 
Ripened at Stradivari's door. 

How many shapes it wore, 
This ever-changing, ever-sweetening thing 
Of many nations' fathering, 

How many names it bore ! 
What brother-tools 
Of kindred powers 
Were born from the uncountable striving hours 
That, pregnant of perfection, passed 

Ere Italy the one that rules 
With treble clarity the deeper choir 
Held up to the world's ear at last, 
Exultant in achieved desire ! 

From that day unto this, 
As through the diligent 
And earlier long years, there works a potent art, 
intent 

The gold-larynxed instrument 
No resource of the rhymed note, the linked rhythm 

shall miss, 
Wherewith to wake, within the chambers of the 
ear, 

Concords the soul may willingly 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 45 

Leave in a lovely vagueness, uninterpreted ; 
Nor any suasive sound by whose allure it may 
be led — 

What matter where, 
If but it be 
Far-borne from narrow precincts of its own 

Mortality ? 
Nor is there rhetoric of singing vocable 
Or graphic tone 
This puissant art 
Denieth to the perfect tool, 
Weaving with metaphors mellifluous, 
Canorous cadences symbolic, luminous, 
The language of delight 
That the enravished heart 
Translates from thrilled air to be 
The vivid echoings of sight, 
The utmost eloquence of hope and memory. 

But dumb the language, dumb 
The mouthpiece, until he shall come 
Who, serving both, by both so served, wakes 
From threefold artifice an animate art, — 

Whose power so makes 
His hand their arbiter of destinies 
That only do they live when he decrees, 
And only testify as he may please. 



46 KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

Creative thus his part 
As was the lowlier labor of the multiplied un- 
named 
Who step by step the mouthpiece framed ; 
As is the lofty toil that in the silence of the earth, 

Its stridulous noise, 
Its gleams of tunefulness in wind and bird, 
In little waters and great waves, hath heard 
A hint of sensuous and of spiritual joys, 
And, thus conceiving, brings to birth, 
After long nourishment 
Upon the opulent 
Warm blood of human life, the music that must 

then demand 
Its re-creation at the player's hand. 

v 
Oh player, with thy tressed bow 
Touch, touch, and ope once more 

The plangent door 
Impenetrable save to thee ! 
Beyond, make audible the flow 
Of shining tides that break forever on the strand 
Where Beauty rose from floods of harmony ; 

Play us the mirth 
Of half-gods of the waters and the earth ; 
Play (as thy viol can) 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 47 

The wild-fire of the pipes of Pan ; 
Play (we have heard it ) with Apollo's hand 

His lyre of hyaline serenity ; 

Make strings to cymbals and lift up 
(Already we have drunk of it) the Dionysian cup, 
That we may hear again the panthers' tread, 
The rustle of the vine-leaves on the sultry head. 

Oh, not from only the four heart-strings of the 
violin, 

Not solely from thine empery of art, 
Evoke thy fingers the clairvoyance of far phan- 
tasy. 
Upon the subtile nerves they play that deep within 
The breast of nature start 
All vernal pulses, move 
The wings of aspiration, fill the arteries of love. 
The tool is but a tool, the melody 

But beautiful device 
Whereby the spirit to the spirit cries. 
Master of perfect speech, and more, he needs 
must prove — 

A sorcerer to generate, 
Poet to clarify, 
Hierophant to consecrate 
The message of emotion, — who would build 
Its palaces of cloud, 



48 KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

Unveil the vistas of the sacred grove, 
Waken the healing springs that yield 
A balsam for the fevered moods 
Bred of the daily stress 
And clamor of the crowd, 
A cordial for the lassitudes 
Of loneliness, 
A philter to persuade the heart it newly sees 
Young life and love and passion's sweet desira- 
bilities. 

VI 

Not alway can we name 

What the enkindled eye, 

Dazzled of wordless poesy, 
Beholdeth in the blowing flame, 

Nor alway understand, 
Not though we hearken hand in hand, 

The message as the same : 

To each for his own needs 
The manna of its strong delight the music feeds. 

Though he but hear 
Rapture of pleasure passing not the outward ear, 
A deep immunity of peace he still may know, 

Or tonic gush of energy ; 
And if the chords within him be attune 
To the keen impact of the flowing rune, 



KREISLER'S VIOLIN 49 

When the uplifted violin shall say, 
Follow! I lead the way, 
To farthest reach of ecstasy 
His soul may go — 
Swept by the swift multisonous beat 
Of winged feet 
To hilltops murmurous with promises divine, 
To skyey pinnacles where dream-lights of fruition 
shine. 

And farther, farther, past all language of the mor- 
tal heart, 

And tongues of splendors of known things, there 
may be heard 

August vibration of the all-creative Word : 

When the deep chorus of the orchestra sustains, 
Swift, powerful, of mystic strains 

The rush supernal, lifted from the earth and set 
apart 

From boundaries of time, trembling we stand 

Amid the echoes of the wind that passed before 
His face 

Blowing the nascent stars to place 
Out of the hollow of His hand, 

The wind that, drawn into the nostrils of the 
man, 

The passionate voyagings of the soul began. 



So KREISLER'S VIOLIN 

Aye, power it hath, the wondrous diapason, to 
unfold 

The mysteries, elsewise inviolate, 
Of forces and of glories that await 
The soul when it shall pass from life to Life, and 

there, 
Where vast low musics never-ceasingly have rolled 
Since the first sphere 
Was bid to swing 
In measured paths and sing, 
Between the pillars of His throne 
In radiancies ineffable behold 
The burning countenance of the Unknown. 
igio. 



THE BUILDERS OF RENOWN 

i 

Come, Fortune, put a rival to the test : 

Rear thrones, carve sceptres, spread imperial 

lands, 
And give them, lavish, into powerful hands, 

Elizabeth's or Catherine's. Arrest 

The flying storms to fight for her at sea, 

Buffeting 'neath her footstool the blown power 
Of broken-hearted Spain ; to the topmost hour 

Of England wed her name, and bid it be 

Badge of the muse's lordliest avatar 

Since vocal Hellas drowsed and slept. Or 
where 

Great Peter set his frosty dais, there 
Set hers, the blood-besprinkled, in the far, 

Savage, and passionate North, and plant so much, 
With woman's daring worst, in her bold breast 
Of manhood's kingly and sagacious best 

That, Paphian, yet she stands, valiant, with such 
S3 



54 THE BUILDERS OF RENOWN 

As strove to serve great nations. Thou canst so 
Build sovereign figures farthest time shall not 
Crowd from the living world to worlds forgot, 

Nor from their crowned eminence overthrow. 



II 

But turn thee now his handiwork to see 
Who is thy rival, though no god to frame 
Souls or fair forms as he would have them, name 

Rulers to realms, or mark their destiny : 

Only a mortal, dowered but with a voice, 
Who wanders up and down our daily ways 
Looking on what he loves and speaking praise, 

Choosing from chance the best, and of his choice 

Dreaming aloud in rhyme, yet sure and strong 
As Fortune to raise pedestals of fame. 
Let him but love, the letters of the name 

Illumined by the radiance of his song 

Shine fairer (as the star auroral is 

More fair than bravest beacon lit by hands) 
Than titles of the guardians of proud lands, 

Illustrious queens, resplendent empresses. 



THE BUILDERS OF RENOWN 55 

Elizabeths and Catherines — they may lie 

Untouched of our desire while, thralled, we turn 
Pages that tell how Laura smiled, and learn 

How Beatrice bent her head in passing by. 



NAPOLEON II 

Poor babe of France and captive of her foes, 
Exiled, disarmed, and disinherited, 
Within the tomb thy star revives ; for though 
Reichstadt the letters cut upon the stone 
May spell, and King of Rome the words may run 
Where palace gossip babbles of thy few- 
Unshadowed days, a louder voice than theirs 
Proclaims thee by the title of thy dreams : 
The second Caesar of the French, and like 
His great begetter called Napoleon. 

Poor pinch of royal dust, commingled soon 
In alien soil with ashes of the things 
Outworn thy father toppled down and burned, 
Vague sterile child of old and new, vague lord 
Of naught and nowhere, on a shadowy throne, 
Near the huge pedestal the Corsican 
Upreared with wrecks and fragments of the seats 
Of ancient tyrannies, thy figure sits, 
A shape of mist yet lordlier called than kings — 
56 



NAPOLEON II 57 

The simulacrum of an emperor 

Wrought with thy features and thy father's name, 

The ghost of his desire, and on thy brow 

The wraith of his tremendous diadem. 



IN LOWER NEW YORK 

Stand here with me. The throngs dissolve away. 

The sunset fades. A single star grows bright. 

The moon as purely sheds her balm of light 
Through these cliff-corridors as on the bay 
Pure-spread beyond them. Sea-breeze murmurs 
say, 

Not all of time is pledged for gain, the night 

Means sleeping even here, and in despite 
Of gold and greed will dawn a Sabbath-day. 

There is no peace like this, the deep repose 

Of citadels of haggard restlessness. 
Prairie and mountain-top and twilit snows 

Breathe of the benison of silence less 
Than these tired streets, dazed with the noise of 

men, 
When the calm darkness bids them rest again. 



58 



MAY ROSES : COMO 

The snow still lingers on the rugged crest 

Where Alpine outposts envy Italy, 

Yet up and down our terraced slopes we see, 

Bordering the pathways, buds of pearly breast 

And crimson-bosomed open blossoms pressed, 

With jasmine's slender arm and starry eye, 

And vines of denser leaf, so thick, so nigh 

To the low parapets, that, unconfessed, 

The stones lie hid in their luxuriance ; 

And where the bloom-girt way most steeply slants, 

The ruined tower that guards the lake's blue 

trance 
Shows by its shape alone, so deep the wall 
Is buried in wistaria's purple fall 
And countless clustered roses pink and small. 



S9 



THE QUESTION 

Give, pray the living, give 

More willingness to live. 

Why, say the dying, why 

Is it so hard to die ? 

And as the newly born 

Wake with a wail forlorn, 

Shall so the newly dead 

Lie in a painful bed ? 

Or does the cycle close 

When the last life-breath goes, 

And a new earth begin, 

Kinder than this has been ? 

Ask not, but only wait ; 
Soon thou shalt know thy fate. 
Soon thou shalt know — unless 
Greets thee with soft caress 
Nothingness. 



60 



OUR DUST 

The winds of God took up the sand 
And swept and harried it through the land, 
Grinding it in their whirling mills, 
Dashing it on the granite hills. 
And when it dropped upon the beach, 
Rasping its grains there each with each, 
Dragging it whither it would not go, 
The tides of God rolled to and fro. 
His breakers with their heavy tread 
Stamped ever upon its restless bed, 
And soon his blasts began once more 
To scourge it up and down the shore. 
Yet still the sand with hardihood 
Cried upward to the throne of God : 
Thou art thyself, Creator, and 
We are ourselves, these grains of sand. 



61 



HER CALENDAR 

The twelve moons of the circled year 

Have grown from sickle-edge to perfect globe, 

And waning — pallid, leaf-like, sere — 

Have died into the dawn. The earth's broad 

robe 
Has changed from springtime blossomy green and 

white 
To summer's deeper green and gold, 
To duskier green all broidered with the bright 
Devices of the autumn trees, to cold 
And shining argent — then 
Back to spring's lovely livery again. 
I know : for on this little mound 
Three nodding sprays 
Of saxifrage I found, 
And after many days 
A rosy disk upon the wild-rose bush 
Near by. Then from a distant bough 
A red leaf drifted through the evening hush, 
And then awhile there was no mounded grave, 
Only a small, small wave 
In the immaculate whiteness. Now 
The spring has come once more ; for, see, 
The saxifrages bud ; and even so 
As days and moons and seasons go 
62 



HER CALENDAR 63 

Here in my little world, so it must be 
With the encompassing great world that is 
Made beautiful but as the temple-court for this 
Most sacred treasury. 



A PSALM FOR OCTOBER 

For the days he ordained who is Maker of trees 

His forests have flourished, fair green, in the sun. 

From the balm of the rain and the heartening 
breeze, 

From the noon and the night and the cool of the 
morn, 

New strength to themselves they have won ; 

For the hour of the quick'ning to be 

They have ripened the seed of the tree ; 

They have sheltered the paths where the way- 
farers pass, 

And stood as a barrier stout for the corn 

And the meadows of grass ; 

In the web of the moss and the cup of the spring 

They have gathered the myriad drops that will 
keep 

The rivers content with clear waters and deep ; 

And the wild-folk, the timid of foot and of wing, 

In the cleft of the rock, in the root and the head 

Of the tree, they have hidden and fed. 

Long months, saith the Maker, the leaves of his 

trees 
Have exulted, fair green, in the sun. 
Is it meet, now their laughter must cease, 
64 



A PSALM FOR OCTOBER 6s, 

Now the gain of their living is won, 

Is it meet that unhonored they wait for their 

death ? 
Shall a blast come forth 
From the mouth of the north, 
Shall the cold come down 
From the pole's ice-crown, 
And scatter, unheeded, these leaves with its 

breath ? 
Nay, saith the Maker, they shall not so fare ; 
They shall triumph in passing, and dying declare 
The worth and the grace of their service. On 

pyres 
That each shall ignite with its own heart's fires, 
The trees of the forest shall yield up the dress 
That was lent them for use and for loveliness ; 
And the crown of the seasons shall be, 
Not noon of the summer nor dawn of the spring, 
But the time when a splendor of flaming shall 

bring 
The death of the leaves of the tree. 

Now the trees of the Maker have heard — 

Who doubteth ? — the sound of his word, 

For the forest grows bright with the glow at its 

heart, 
And everywhere gleams 



66 A PSALM FOR OCTOBER 

The kindling of trees that are standing apart 
On the slopes of the meadows, the borders of 

streams. 
Flame-red is the frond of the sumach now, 
Fire-gold the long arch of the elm-tree bough ; 
As quivering light in the peace of the air 
Is the flicker of aspens, the birchen-tree's flare ; 
Yellow and scarlet and crimson-red, 
From the low-lying swamp to the hilltop spread, 
Burns the blaze of the maple-trees, higher and 

higher, 
And molten and lambent grow chestnut and beech, 
Till pinnacles, pyramids, pillars of fire 
Toward the crystalline dome of the azure up- 

reach, 
And an incense from braziers of smouldering oak, 
From the torch of the ash tipped with duskier 

smoke, 
Is blent with the mist that at nightfall o'erfills 
The hollows and folds of the hills. 

Incandescent the hills 'neath the far pure sky 
Where the sun and the rivers of stars roll by, 
Incandescent the valleys and marshlands lie ; 
Yet verdant, unscathed, stand the hemlock and fir 
And the column and crown of the pine 
In the clasp of the flame — from the Maker a sign 



A PSALM FOR OCTOBER 67 

That the life in the veins of his forest shall stir, 

And shall break into greenness again, 

In the warmth of the spring, in the springtime rain. 

Shall only the children of Adam behold 

Such glory unrolled ? 

Shall only the gaze of the earthborn desire 

The miracle wrought with these wreathings of fire ? 

Not so. In the calm of the white sunrise 

The Maker looks down with his holy eyes, 

And the seraphs that stand 

At his left and right hand 

Chant the song of the season of sacrifice : 

The psalm of the earth when, her harvesting done, 

She lifts up her arms to the path of the sun, 

And offers, with tithes of her vines and her sheaves, 

The life of her leaves — 

Their beauty of burning as praise 

To the Ancient of Days. 

For H. M. 
Lenox, 1905. 



THE GARDEN OF THE WIND 



The North- West- Wind hath here his garden, 

God-appointed as its warden. 

Other winds may blow upon it, 

Sift the sun and moisture on it, 

Twine the wreaths of fog to lie 

Tangled in its greenery ; 

But its life is lived for beauty, 

And the North-West has the duty 

At its lovely best to show it, 

As its lovers love to know it. 

When he comes he sweeps the blue 

Pure of mist to sapphire hue, 

Darker sapphire tints the sea 

Where the garden's limits be ; 

Brings an air so diamond clear 

That the garden leaves appear 

Jewels all of diverse green : 

Emerald, aquamarine, 

Beryl, jade, and peridot 

In North-West-Wind his garden grow. 

ii 
Great his garden is and splendid, 
'Twixt two waters far extended 

68 



THE GARDEN OF THE WIND 69 

Where the long point bars away- 
Restless ocean from still bay. 
From the harbor to the sea 
All is garden bravery : 
Scarce the troubling plough or spade 
Dareth this domain invade, 
Nature-sown and nature-tended, 
By her rocks and waves defended ; 
Scarcely may the scythe demand 
Tribute from the salt marshland. 
Nor do forests lift their heads 
Over these green garden beds : 
If thou seekest roof of shade, 
Glimmering road and dusky glade, 
Paths that lead thou knowest not whither, 
Turn thy steps and come not hither — 
Open to the enarching skies 
North- West- Wind his garden lies. 

in 
These the tenants of the garden 
Where the North- West- Wind is warden : 
Elder and viburnum snows, 
Lavish pinkness of wild rose, 
Sweet-gale's mass of perfumed gray, 
Shining green of berried bay, 
Darker green of wilding pear, 



70 THE GARDEN OF THE WIND 

Sumach with its crimson spear. 

Cherry, birch, and tupelo 

Shrub-like with black-alder grow ; 

Twice man-tall the blueberries 

Bravely rank themselves as trees ; 

Spicy, white, the clethra spire, 

Myriad-numbered, pointeth higher. 

Through the fragrant thicket twines 

Endless net of streaming vines ; 

Wheresoever they can press, 

Fern and brake the ground possess ; 

And the great rocks spread their strength 

Through North-West- Wind his garden's length. 

IV 

Shelving cliff and rounded boulder 
Show their stalwart slope and shoulder 
By the sea-marge bare and yellow, 
In the sheltered stretches mellow 
With the lichen's bloomy gray. 
Here their outposts drop away 
To the verge of swampy reaches, 
To the brink of rippling beaches ; 
Here they lift a lordly head 
Banked in waves of green that spread 
Up the crevice, up the edge, 
To the topmost level ledge ; 



THE GARDEN OF THE WIND 71 

And in the low lands between 

All is billowy floods of green 

Whispering in a soft commotion, 

Verdant acres of an ocean 

Streaked with spindrift blossom-white, 

Islanding each rocky height — 

Tumbling seas of brake and bush 

Where North- West-Wind his pinions rush. 

Gloucester, 
1909. 



SPRING ON LONG ISLAND 

Not on the wind's high wing 

Comes the Spring 

When she comes our way ; 

Not on the chariots white 

Of the clouds of day 

Or the pinions gray 

Of the wavering mists of night ; 

And she comes not, over the roads of the land, 

By valley and plain where the great hills stand, 

By the forest path or the fallow plain. 

When she knows we are waiting again 

She is borne by the sea from the south ; 

There is salt in the breath of her mouth, 

There is brine in the scent of her hair, 

And everywhere 

The lapping of water sings 

With the bird-notes that she brings. 

See how the coast-lines slip 

More and more to the west 

From the pine-clad breast 

Of Maine unto Florida's palmy tip. 

See how our isle looks forth 

From its anchorage here at the north 



72 



SPRING ON LONG ISLAND 73 

Toward the islands of Caribbee — 

Nothing between but the sea. 

It is there that the Spring abides 

The end of our wintertides. 

It is thence she comes on the shining flood, 

In a splendor of sunlight dressed, 

The north in her heart, the south in her blood, 

And her feet on the white wave-crest 

So eagerly swift that we say she is near, 

And the day beyond she is here, she is here. 

Then the blue of our sky is the blue of the deep- 
stretched sea, 

The green of our banks is the green where its 
shallows be, 

And its foam-wreaths bloom once more 

In the blossoms that spray us from shore to shore, 

Orchard and thicket and forest floor — 

Apple, azalea, dogwood, and all 

The frail things snowy and small 

That cling 

To the garment-edge of the Spring. 



THE CHILDREN'S HERITAGE 

The old Earth pardons much, but overpass 
The mark her bounty sets and merciless 
Her punishments. No patient waters bless 

Their parching intervales, no deep pools glass 

Their naked flanks, where her sad mountains 
stand 
That once were thick with greenness — ravished, 

rent, 
Mothers to-day of torrents fiercely spent 

To broaden ruin in a ruined land. 

Stones he shall have for bread who seeks it here, 
For fruitage, harvests of the crumbling rock ; 
Dust for his drink, while far mirages mock 

The backward dreaming of the desperate year. 

— Who sees ? Who heeds ? Again and yet again 
The axe is whetted and the brand made hot, 
And the dull ears of sloth and greed hear not 

The curses that shall speak for unborn men. 



74 



AT SEA 

When the great autumn gales rush up the coast, 
Rending their canopies of driven cloud, 
And, answering to their touch, an endless host 
Of northward storming billows cry aloud — 
How shall he fear who sails the sea ? 

Though death come very nigh, 

He cannot fear to die 
Enarmed in this immense vitality. 

When mystic haze of autumn lulls the deep 
To visions of unending peacefulness, 
And wide its argent acres swing and sleep, 
Unruffled by the dim air's slow caress — 
How shall he fear who sails the sea ? 

Whate'er the day may give, 

He cannot fear to live 
Wrapped in this measureless tranquillity. 

Pequot, 
1904. 



75 



A GARDEN IN THE FERN 

Make thyself lowly for this garden laid 
In the clear stillness of the beech-tree shade. 
Make thyself lowly ; lie amid the fern ; 
Forget the size of men and tree-trunks ; learn, 
With eyes attuned to daintier scale, to see 
What the green garths of fairyland may be. 

Hollowed a-top is this gray stone ; its bed 
Is moss, and the enwalling fronds are spread 
A space apart that so, untouched, may rise 
The white wood-sorrel's delicate surprise 
From the deep emerald floor. Come close and 

know 
How triple leaflets on each thin stalk grow, 
Drooping together at the touch of night, 
How the snowflakes of flowers, so exquisite 
They shame the wild rose as too large and bold, 
Are crimson-threaded and are eyed with gold. 

Dark trefoil and white blossom — see, they press, 
A tremulous company of loveliness, 
Trusting frail feet to nook and crevice, up 
The lichened stone to find and wreathe its cup, 
The moss-lined basin that the diligent wings 
Of winds have sown with seeds of tiny things. 

76 



A GARDEN IN THE FERN 77 

There are no words minute and sweet enough 
To tell how flourishes upon its rough 
Rock-base this garden plot. Here too are ferns 
But miniature : e'en the wood-sorrel turns 
Downward to them its golden glance ; inch-tall 
And scarcely more the grasses grow and all 
Their bonny neighbors of the broader leaf — 
Minim parterres where one small scarlet sheaf 
Of strawberries is statured like a tree, 
And gauzy flies as birds for bigness be. 

Why seek far grandeurs ? Wash thy lids with dew 

Of the accustomed morning, line thy shoe 

With fern-seed from the well-known woodland 

path, 
And go (invisibly to him who hath 
Proud eyes for the remote and large) where stand, 
Frequent, unfenced, the garths of fairyland. 

Onteora. 



CHEROKEE ROSES 

(Two Voices.) 

If we could see how from the mould 
These miracles of white unfold, 
Chill were the world that ignorance 
Now warms with flamings of romance ; 
The world were bleak that now we see 
Through opaline clouds of mystery. 
God's grace it is we cannot guess 
The alchemies of loveliness, 
Or know how from the voiceless dark 
Springs to its birth the vital spark. 

Dullard, oh, dullard, to deny 

The permanence of poesy ! 

What has the mortal learned that took 

One letter of charm from Nature's book ? 

Each mastery of far space hath lent 

New splendors to the firmament, 

And could we win from mother-earth 

Insight into her ways of birth, 

Our dazzled eyes might scarcely bear 

The streams of beauty pulsing there. 

If we could know why perish must 
These perfect petals, dust to dust, 

78 



CHEROKEE ROSES 79 

Our ears unstopped, our eyes unsealed, 
Would find the Secret then revealed ; 
Sparrow and moth and moon would tell 
What now the grave-grass hideth well. 
God's grace it is we cannot pry- 
Where the long generations lie : 
So dreams of heaven shine unalloyed 
If heaven there be, if but the void. 

Coward, oh, coward, to be glad 

No tortured soul has ever had 

From past mortality a sign. 

Are there no graves thou callest thine 

Where thou hast couched thy head to weep 

Lest silence mean an endless sleep ? 

Or comes no hour when thy tired soul 

Longs that a sleep may be the whole ? 

Coward, to fear a signal shown, 

Should heaven it pledge or peace alone. 



WHEN IT IS DARK 

Is the night black 

On the rough slope, 

Sunless and moonless the steep track ? 

Light flaming stars of hope 

Upon the cloud that shadows thee. 

Do they burn low ? 

Feed other fire : 

Let toil's great anvil flare and glow, 

Let charity aspire, 

And sacrifice blaze fervently. 

Do these grow pale 

In the night-damp ? 

When even love and labor fail, 

Hold high, hold high the lamp 

Of fortitude, and thou shalt see. 



80 



AT A CHILD'S GRAVE 

Early the dying, ay, 

But flawless the life thereby. 

And who would a pearl exchange, 

Perfect, for one of a strange 

Distorted shape, and a hue 

Less white than innocence, though 

It had grown to a larger size ? 

Only the blind can prize 

A pearl for its weight always, 

A life for its length of days. 

Lie down in thy little grave. 
Still shall thy mother have 
A jewel of joy to keep 
On her heart, awake, asleep, 
While another mother may 
Cover her head by day, 
And mourn at night on her bed 
The lost who are not the dead. 



81 



THE CHILD'S DREAM 

Last night I was a child that just had learned to 
die, 

A child like me, but newly born 
Into a beautiful morn 

Of starry sky. 
I saw the morning light, 
Yet there were stars, silver and golden, softly 
bright. 

The stars were there, and music — for the shapes, 
white-clad, 

Of angels, thousands, stood to sing, 
All white of robe and wing. 

A harp they had, 
A viol, or a lute ; 
All sang but one ; she smiled and held her harp- 
strings mute. 

My heart was full of tears ; I laughed when I knew 
why: 

The angel of the whitest wing, 
She who cared not to sing, 

Leaned from the sky 
And smiled, and I could see 
My mother's lovely eyes ; my mother smiled at me. 



82 



THE CHILD'S DREAM 83 

In this our world I never saw my mother's face ; 
She died ; she died as I was born. 
But in that starry morn 

I found the place 
Where she abides, and knew 
They were her eyes, and wept, yet laughed and 
kissed her too. 



APPLE BLOSSOMS AND THE CHILD 

Beneath each rosy-white 

Ethereal bloom, lovely as pearl and seemingly 

As useless save to charm the sight, 

There lieth, not mere prophecy 

Of fruit to come, but the round fruit 

In miniature complete — a globe minute, 

With envelope and flesh and seed 

So planned that it shall need, 

To make fair food for longing lips, 

Only the balmy wind, the freshening rain, 

And the sunshine that slips 

Its warming touch the sheltering leaves between. 

— And, baby, in thy soul again 

Whoso hath looked the miracle hath seen. 

Here is not promise that a man shall grow ; 

Here is the man as he may be, 

Full-formed within 

The fragrant petal-cup of infancy. 

Watch the bright eye 
Seeking, insatiable, to learn, to know; 
Watch the unresting steps begin 
Their voyages of far discovery. 
See how to hands outstretched the soft hands 
cling, 



84 



APPLE BLOSSOMS AND THE CHILD 85 

And how the soft glance tells 

Responsive love to love that dwells 

In other eyes. 

See how the tender wounded heart can bring 

Swift dignity to heal its grieved surprise, 

And courage comes at call, 

The brave mouth quivers but the foot stands fast 

When perilous risks befall — 

When the great hound, first seen, affrights, 

Or in the dusk of garden nights 

The moth, the beetle, whirr too closely past ! 

How valiant the desire to aid 

In tasks enormous for so slender powers ; 

How keen the sense in the beloved to see 

The changes made 

By the uncomp ehended flight of changeful 

hours — 
To give the kiss betokening sympathy, 
Or trustfulness, or merriment. 
How quick the lamentations and the crystal tears 
For the young robin slain, 
The lily that the storm has rent ; 
Yet with what gentle fortitude the small soul bears 
Its own long fevered test of unaccustomed pain, 
Stoic yet sweet the while, 
Weakened of all except the will to smile. 



86 APPLE BLOSSOMS AND THE CHILD 

So unto us the babe is born ; 

So in the blossom of his happy morn 

Lie wrapped the pattern and the plan 

Of grace and virtue in the man. 

Oh, sheltering leaves, oh, warming sun, 

Guard, foster, fashion, that there shall in one 

Be fully ripened, undistorted, undefiled, 

The springtime excellences of the child. 

Blow, bracing wind ! Fall, fructifying rain ! 

Round out the promise of the tiny sphere, 

Nor let it grow to gnarled shape and bitter grain, 

Nor, blighted, drop and disappear; 

For all the world is hungry, thirsty, destitute, 

Lacking due harvest of such fruit 

As waits, so small and yet so perfect, here. 



TOMMY'S PLAYMATES 

I do not need to dream at night, 

I can so easily, 
"Pretending" in the broad daylight, 

Be things that are not Me. 

Sometimes I am a polar bear 

Out hunting on the ice, 
With two young cubs the food to share, 

And they are my white mice. 

Sometimes I am a pirate wild, 

With more than eighteen men 

Till all but two are shot and killed — 
Those are the mice again. 

When mother laughs but won't allow 
The mice in bed, I'd laugh 

Except that I must be a cow 
And bellow for my calf. 

I was an angel yesterday, 

The kind that flies and sings, 

And so the mice were sure that they 
Had pairs of little wings. 



87 



88 TOMMY'S PLAYMATES 

They are not yet as wise as I 
To make-believe and play, 

But till I showed them how to try 
They were just mice all day. 

For Betty Foster, 

IQIO. 



SUNRISE BY THE SEA 

The wakening forest singeth to the sea, 
"The day is coming, sing aloud with me !" 
The darkness scatters and the dawn is here, 
The silver light is spreading, day is near. 

"Dawn !" say the birches, delicately stirred 
To speak the happy word. 

The darkness vanishes, the night is done ; 
The sky is golden, gold the mounting sun ; 
And all the forest glistens in his rays, 
And all the ocean burns beneath his blaze. 

"Light !" say the needles, sibilant and soft, 
Of pine-trees far aloft. 

The young, the sturdy, and the ancient trees, 
And in their boughs the little salt sea-breeze, 
They cry, "Rejoice ! Forget the chilly night, 
Exult and sing, make merry in the light." 

"Day !" sings the wild-rose as she offers up 
The dew-drops in her cup. 



89 



THE OLD OAK 

Ancient oak in the winter cold, 
What thy comfort now thou art old? 

Ay, I am an ancient oak, 
Hollowed deep by levin stroke, 
Boughs by wind and winter broke, 

Leaves that burgeon few and small 
And with early frost-bites fall. 

Troubled, too, by mortal hands, 
Lie defaced my happy lands, 
Till to-day there scarcely stands, 
Where my lonely eyes can see, 
Blossom, bush, or brother tree. 

But no tree robust and whole 
Has, like me, within its bole 
House that holds a singing soul — 
Dryad soul that in the night, 
When the friendly stars invite, 

Tells me of the brooks at play 
Where no water flows to-day, 
Sings of buds and birds of May 
Where the dusty highways run 
And the chimmeys cloud the sun. 



90 



THE OLD OAK 91 

Then I dream of ploughs and sheaves, 
Bees and nests and scarlet leaves, 
Morning stars and moonlit eves — 

And I feel not winter cold, 

And I know not I am old. 

Heart of mine, as thine, tree^ 
Houseth dryad Memory ! 



INITIATION 

I was tired of gardens of man's making, 
Thousand blooms that know each other not, 
Alien trophies of his covetous taking 
From far hills and valleys, in one spot 

Striving to make beauty for an eye 

Beauty-born disdains to satisfy. 

So I prayed the dear earth to uncover, 
In the wild ways where she dwells alone, 
Secret places kept for her true lover, 
Sacred gardens of her happy own, 
Sunlit, shadowy, musical at morn, 
Where she hides her darling, beauty-born. 

But she laughed as laughs a bounteous mother, 
Saying, Come in faith, with open eyes, 
Come in love, to all wild things a brother, 
Think not overmuch of mysteries ; 

Ask no secrets, trust the common chance — 
By thy doorsill beauty waits thy glance. 

Though, she said, I keep in sanctuary 

Here and there an altar of delight, 

Even the roadside grass is tributary 

To his joy who journeyeth aright, 

And a whispering bush shall bid him hear 
All the wildwood singing in his ear. 



92 



THE SUNSET SHORE 

Here, in the sunset hour of summer time, 
With mystical rhythm and rhyme 
Of color and of light they sing — the inviolable sky, 

The unalterable main, 
The untrodden sand-stretch featureless and pure, 
Framed by the dunes that shift and shift again 
Yet ever steadfastly 
As guardians of the solitude endure. 

To east and west are spread the reaches 
Of the long level immaculate beaches ; 
The low and level glory of the sinking sun 
Floweth aslant where the long breakers run, 
Turning to iridescent dust their feathered white, 
To chrysophrase their hollowed bulk of green. 
The slow last films of the retreating wave, 
Foam-threaded, clothe the sands in dappled sheen 
As with a patterned lace. All amethyst 
The wide sea-spaces of the east and south, the 

veils of mist 
That merge them in the purple heaven ; all opal 

light 
The western seas and their inseparable sky. 
The horizon line is blotted out that gave 
To earth, to firmament, identity ; 



93 



g 4 THE SUNSET SHORE 

The dunes forgot behind us, air alone 

And waters build our world, 

And they are fused to one 
By bold and subtile magics of the sun. 
There is no form, no substance, save 

In the forever-changing march 
Of the swift billows ' ever-changing arch 

Here close beside us curled, 
And shattered, and upcurled again, — 
All else a singing softness, luminous, 
Of color disembodied, vaporous, 
Ranging the scale of coolnesses from white em- 
pearled 

To every hyacinthine hue 
Of liquid violet, of melted blue — 

Cool, cool, till past the crest 
Of the low dune the sun sinks down, and then 
Flushed rosy with reverberations of the red north- 
west. 

There, wnere the drowsing lands 
Are beautiful beneath the sunset, and the strands 

Of crimson bordering the nether sky 
Break to small cloudy isles that on a golden ocean 

lie, 
Is splendor of the earth at eventide — no more ; 
But visible here, 



THE SUNSET SHORE 95 

Beyond the southward-gazing shore, 
Is beauty disincarnate, half a hemisphere 
Dissolved to an irradiate mystery ; 
Not void though without form; not void, but 

filled 
With such a palpitant loveliness as thrilled 
The harps of the archangels when they heard 
The quivering aether answer to the first creative 
word. 

The moments pass. We see — 
Nay, only as with dreaming senses know, 
With half-belief of ecstasy behold — 

The wonder of the flood and flow 
Of radiant infinity. 
The many moments pass, until the sun has wholly 

gone, 
Unweaving all his iris-spells. The sky grows wan, 
The sea grows dark ; the mists are dim and cold. 
Slowly a deeper blackness gathers, for a wind 

blows now, 

Loud, louder, rolling up 
Cloud-drifts that fill the vast celestial cup, 
Awhile so over-brimmed by delicate wine 
Of rapture, with a rough tempestuous draught, 
Chilling the soul as though it quaffed 
The breath itself of melancholy and dismay. 



9 6 THE SUNSET SHORE 

Chaos returns — the sphere is swept away. 
Naught lives but the inchoate storm. 
There is no moon, no star. 
Color has perished. Form 
Has vanished utterly : there is no more the line 
Of billowing waters, but mere ghostly gleams of 
white, 

Fangs of a fierce and uncreated Night 
Shouting, with elemental sounds, paeans of aimless 
war. 

Easthampton. 



LEARN OF THE EARTH 



Of our great Mother learn forgivingness. 

Her groves of kingly pine, her hemlock-trees' 
Dark massy clouds, man layeth low ; the knees 

Of oaks o'erthrown his mastery confess ; 

His biting axe, his fire, his foot, have made 
A wreck of the glad fringes of the wood 
Where blueberry, sumach, rose, and bracken 
stood, 

And floods of small and starry flowers were laid, 

Spring coming, wave-like on the sunny grass, 
And through the dusky openings in the green ; — 
Yet Earth, as though no ravage she had seen, 

Sends the sweet currents of her blood to pass 

Into the sprouts of his new-planted corn, 

Spreads gold for him where once were verdant 

things, 
Labors in love to aid his harvestings, 

And laughs to see the riches she has borne. 

And when in after years he passes by, 

Leaving forlorn the stripped and waiting field, 



97 



98 LEARN OF THE EARTH 

Forcing again the virgin lands to yield, 
Again the Earth forgives ungrudgingly, 

Takes back the desolate acres for her own 
Fair wilding aims and methods of increase, 
Hides them with herbage, ranks her seedling 
trees, 

And smiles to see the beauty she has sown. 

ii 

And of our Mother learn remembrance. See, 
As infant Spring now kisses her from sleep, 
How do her stirring looms the patterns keep 

Of all her children's wants — how faithfully ! 

The shadbush breaks to snow before, almost, 
The snows are gone ; the fleecy baccharis 
Shall wait, for so its own desiring is, 

To greet the asters on the autumn coast. 

The maple of the rock in green will blow ; 
His brother of the swampland shall not lack 
The tasseled red. The rose-tints will come back 

To dogwoods that were pink last year, although 

Their many brethren spread their white anew. 
On wings of painted moths there alters not 



LEARN OF THE EARTH 99 

The fairy marvel of the smallest spot, 
Nor in the robin's nest the delicate blue. 

The selfsame odor haunts the flowering grape 
That Pliny called the sweetest on the wind. 
As once it found in Hellas, so shall find 

The purple iris here its perfect shape. 

Again the pines wear tips like pallid flame, 
The mosses have their scarlet cups or gray, 
This bird bright eyes for night and that for day : — 

'Twas so of eld and ever is the same. 

in 

Yet shall Earth teach a wise forgetfulness. 
The past is past, the dead lie still, says she, 
And spends her soul to tend the budding tree, 

The brooding bird, the fern's uncurHng tress. 

She loves to hide the witnesses of graves : 
The carven monument she pulls awry, 
Drags down amid the brambled grass to lie, 

Though year by year, intact, unstirred, she saves 

The boulder hollowed by her unseen hand 
To squirrel's drinking-cup ; the pious mound 
Heaped o'er the dead she levels with the ground 

The while her own green hillocks safely stand. 



ioo LEARN OF THE EARTH 

See how she fills from death the founts of life : 
Heeds not the sparrow when it falls, but grows, 
For that its wings are dust, a rosier rose ; 

Ignores the victims of the fish-hawks' strife 

With wind and wave because the tall nests hold 
Young beaks a-clamor for their food ; mourns 

not 
That scarlet lilies fail, but clothes the spot 

With all September's purple and its gold. 

And when the last leaves die, her garmenting 
Crystalline, white, she draweth close ; so sleeps, 
Forgetting seasons gone and lost, and keeps 

Warm at her heart of hearts the unborn Spring. 

1908. 



A LETTER FROM THE LOW LAND 

Come, dear, come from the fortresses of granite 
Walling half the world out, half the skies 
away; 
Come where the low land, open by the shore- 
side, 
Offers to its children what a free land may. 

Broad land, level land, leagues of grass and clover, 
Ranks of shining corn-blade and tall tossed 
plume, 

Dark cedar sentinels for long files of forest, 
Goldenrod afire in a smoke of aster bloom. 

Wide lands, winds' lands, level for their coursers 
Whencesoe'er they come with smell of soil or sea ; 

North winds, west winds, whatsoe'er their quarter, 
Straight rush their cavalcades — straight, strong, 
free. 

Far mystic meeting-place of world's marge and 
heaven, 
Curves the horizon line, perfect to the view ; 
Hill-crest nor mountain-breast breaks the mighty 
circle — 
Round lies the planet 'neath a hemisphere of 
blue. 

IOI 



io2 A LETTER FROM THE LOW LAND 

This is the glory of the level-lying wide lands, 
This is the splendor that no steep lands know : 

Glory of the paths where in clear hemicycles, 
World-rim to world-rim, the constellations go. 

Glowing red, golden bright, in the sumptuous west 
land 
When the sunsets blossom, they bloom around 
the sky — 
Green and amber northward, rosy in the east 
realm, 
Amethyst where amethyst the southern waters 
lie. 

Look how the little rains slip across the hay-fields, 
Dimple on the sea-fields, hurry far away; 

Look how the long storms, breaking for the twi- 
light, 
Strew upon the sky-fields windy swathes of gray. 

Thunder drums, levin swords, musketry of rain- 
bursts — 
How the midnight battle-crash the whole vault 
fills! 
Day brings the pageant of the white cloud-masses, 
Lordlier and lovelier than snow-embastioned 
hills. 



A LETTER FROM THE LOW LAND 103 

Scent of the salt breeze and scent of the clover, 
Wild rose and clethra and bayberry's breath, 

Glamor of the sea-shine, witchery of mist wreaths — 
Hark ! they are calling and the summer hasteneth. 

Come, dear, come from the shut and hampered 

valleys, 
Come where the waves on the long beaches 

run, 
Come where the bosom of the warm earth is 

breathing 
Cool breaths of ocean in a broad sweep of 

sun ! 

Easthampton, 
1906. 



JUNE 

Spring is my mother, summer is my sire, 

(So sayeth June). 
A vernal breath, a heart of hot desire ; 
A dawn of cooling mist, a lucent noon 

Of azure fire ; 
The latest violet, the earliest rose, 
The lilies blooming and no lily dead, 
A clearest light that deepest shadow throws, 
Each leaf now open and no leaf yet shed — 
By these ye know me, and the morning choir 
That singeth May is past, July comes soon. 
Spring is my mother, summer is my sire, 

(So sayeth June). 



104 



A NIGHT IN MAY 

Sweet is long sleep, but there is sweeter still : 
To wake in the deep after-midnight hush, 
To hear the drowsing flute and brief low trill 
Of nesting bird rocked in the lilac-bush 
That pours its perfume on the wooing wind. 
— I breathe the night-enchanted flower, I hear 
The dream-entangled song; and thus I find 
Through my own dreams the truth that thou art 

near, 
In my dim thoughts the memory of thy kiss : 
Sweeter than sleep it is to wake like this. 



105 



CONTENT 

He laid his head upon her breast. 

" I am content, " said he ; 
" I longed to buy of Love, for love, his best — 

And I have thee. " 

She laid her hand upon his brow. 

" I am content," thought she ; 
" Love sold me once, for love, his best — and now 

Gives alms to me." 



106 



OUR KINGDOM 

Sweet are the songs that yesterday hath sung; 

Sweet are the songs of a far-off to-morrow, 

The unknown words, the chiming chords unrung, 

That beauty from our faith in beauty borrow. 

But sweeter, sweetest, in my heart-strings play 

The fragmentary cadences that flow 

To syllables and harmonies to-day, 

Half caught, half fugitive, and loveliest so. 

Who needeth songs of yesterday and far 
To-morrows ? Not or thou or I ! Dimmed love 
May sing them, and love yet unborn. The star 
That slowly faded at daybreak above 
Our eastern sea, the star that gathers light, 
Even as we watch, beyond the hilly west, 
The one that in the zenith at midnight 
Shall the long lingering of our joy attest — 

These are the beacons and the boundaries 

Of life for us, the architects of To-day. 

This is our realm, dear heart, its radiancies 

The songs we weave, its winds the harps we play. 

And ever it is ours : each time the night 

Rolls from our path to let the morning in, 

Not shall it come with unfamiliar light, 

Not shall To-morrow but To-day begin. 



107 



TO HER LOVER 

I know not, I know not ! 

You see, 
The leaves are by no means the tree. 
They will wither and die — 
In the winter-buds lie 
As many to burgeon next year. 
But blot out the tint of the blue and where, 
Where is your sky ? 
Quench the flame of Aldebaran's eye 
And you have no star. 

— I am wondering whether the love that I bear 
(To-day, as things are,) 

To your love and to what I imagine your heart, 
I am wondering whether such part 
In the sum of myself it will play 
As the green of the year in the life of the tree ? 
Or will it be 

As is to the heaven by day 
Its radiant blue, and by night 
To the star its immeasurable light ? 



108 



TAKE HEED 

Who shall the smitten bird revive for him 
That ravished its clear trillings from the bough ? 
Who shall the shadowy elm repair when now 
A wanton stroke has lopped its friendliest limb, 
Or gather rose-cheeked apples where was cut 
The rosy flowering from the vernal sprays ? 
Canst thou roll back the earth to burgeoning days, 
Open the blossoming hour that time holds shut ? 

H 

Oh, love with arms outstretched to love-fraught 

Spring, 
Hold all her gifts with a most tender hand! 
September comes, when thou shalt need to stand 
'Neath sheltering branches, bid the late bird sing, 
And garner fruits that in December will 
Make the warm sunshine seem thy climate still. 



109 



HEARTHSTONES 

i 

I am a woman who sits here with Life 

By the dead ashes of the fire of love. 

I am but young, yet he, bending above 

The hearth that grows the colder for our tears, 

Is wan and gray, outwearied with the strife 

To keep some spark alight through the slow years. 

Who now shall warm and comfort him ? and how 

shall I J 

Bear with his days and nights who know not 

how to try ? 



HEARTHSTONES 



II 

Here I, a woman, sit with Love beside 

The fire of life, and watch its embers glow 

Still with a ruddy light though burning low. 

He ever young, I counting not my years, 

As we have sat for long shall so abide, 

Handfast, until the Messenger appears. 

Heart, heart, how sweet is still the laughter in 

Love's eyes, 
How warm the lingering fire upon the hearthstone 

lies ! 



LISTEN, MY SISTER 

Hast thou heard the demands of the core of thy 

heart, 
My sister ? — singled them out, set them apart 
From the wide vague fancies, the keen brief pangs 

of desire, 
The longings that pass as a breath 
Or blaze as a fire 
That scorches and scars ? Hast thou tried to 

make sure 
What good thou shalt crave of thy life, to endure 
For thy life, unto death ? 

Find it, my sister. Single it out ; look deep 
In thy soul and search well. Test the strength 
Of what seemeth thine uttermost wish by the 

length 
Of the days that may dawn ere the last bringeth 

sleep ; 
And balance its weight 
As of jewels and gold 
That may buy thee content with the wealth of 

thy fate, 
Though but brief be the hours thou shalt hold 
To thy bosom thy treasure. 



LISTEN, MY SISTER 113 

By all else thou couldst have thou shalt measure 
The worth of what seemeth the most and the best ; 
And when thou hast finished the quest, 
Knowing surely thine ultimate need, 
Make ready to forfeit all else. The great good 

must be bought ; 
Somewhat thou must pay as the meed 
Of thy birthright, for God giveth nothing for 

naught ; 
And his price may be great. 

Thy life is thine all : do thy utmost that so 

It may yield thee its utmost. Be patient to wait 

For fruition, be instant to know 

In what field, from what seed-pod, the harvest 

may grow. 
Ask aid of the vision that sees thee most clearly 

— thy own ; 
And ask of the wisdom of souls that have tested 

and known. 
— Ah little sister and young, I have known, I 

have lived; I am right; 
Believe when I tell thee what far and forever 

outweigheth the rest : 
The heart of a man on thy heart day and night, 
A child on thy breast. 



IF GREAT LOVE DIE 

If great love die, ask of thy days of earth 

No other. Keep from lesser bondage free. 

Let the high gift bequeath the next in worth — 
Unto thyself thine own sufficiency. 



114 



A WARNING 

No chance can ravish from thy resolute grasp 
One greatest good, no power can break thy clasp 
Only thyself, stooped to ignobler quest, 
May cheat thee of the will to seek the best. 



"S 



TWO SPIRITS 



I am the master-spirit, Love the King. 
Hardly is in the whole world anything 
Beneath the sun and stars but when I say, 
"Do this or that," it maketh answer "Yea." 
Empires and conquests, friendships, pieties, 
I wreck and ravage if I so but please ; 
And wreck and ravage, hatred and despair 
Of men and gods, my mandate may repair. 
All other powers unto my footstool bring 
Their tribute, so to worship Love the King. 



116 



TWO SPIRITS 117 



n 

Nay, royal brother, look on me, a slave, 
And boast not potency to blast or save. 
Here in the dust I stand, the only one 
Greater than thou beneath the stars and sun. 
I work no ruin, but the spent revive ; 
And whom thou slayest, lo, I make alive. 
Stronger in suppliance lifted is my hand, 
O King, than thy bright sceptre of command. 
The Lords of Life their utmost empire gave 
Not unto thee, but unto Love the Slave. 



REWARDS 

Dig for a gem : — if with the grains of sand 
There come but broken quartz, still it is bright. 
Grasp at the stars : — now look within thy hand ; 
Only a firefly, yet a spark of light. 



118 



THE CUP AND THE WINE 

Brief, cried the Psalmist, is the total span 
Of the brief days that build the life of man. 
— Ay, royal singer on Judsean hills, 
The cup is narrow ; but the wine that fills 
The cup may mean an ocean in its rim. 
A thousand years are as a day to Him 
Who pours our draughts of joy and tears : 
To us a day may be a thousand years. 



119 



AN EPITAPH 

For love and joy to Life I prayed ; 

An empty hand he stretched to me ; 
And when I turned to Death for aid, 

He passed me by and would not see. 

But Life repented him and gave 
All I had ever asked and more. 

Then Death in haste bestowed this grave 
Some broken heart was pleading for. 



120 



THE POET 

Is the voice as an echo of voices of old, 

The song but a singing of tales oft told ? 

Then the eyes of the singer are dim and his pulses 

cold: 
For, as hour follows hour, in a splendor of birth 
The world is refilled with things living and true ; 
And, fresh thing or ancient, though old as the earth, 
The singer who sees it aright he maketh it new. 
When it comes to him (be it or love, 
Or passion, or vision of death, 
The tempest-wind's breath, 
The clash of the sea, the complaint of the dove, 
A glint of the green where the elms bud again, 
The stars in the flag, the shrill of the fife, 
A rapture of strength, a whirlwind of pain — 
Be it aught that means life or the ceasing of life,) 
What imports is the way his heart takes it, 
The web into which he makes it, 
The pattern it leaves 
In the garment he weaves 
For his spirit. 

Remember, thou singer, thou poet, 
Who lovest the world, that thou never 
In all of thy singing canst show it, 
The world as it is : 



122 THE POET 

Not even canst picture the rose — 

It is never her color that shows ; 

Not even canst tell of a bird — 

It is never his note that is heard. 

What thou showest is this : 

Thyself, thine own soul ; and not ever 

That soul as it nakedly came from thy mother. 

Thy hands and no other 

Must dress it in garments of spirits long dead, 

Begged, stolen, or borrowed, or bought, 

In rags that thy betters have shed, 

Or else in a woof thou hast wrought 

Upon looms of thine own with thy love and thy 

pain, 
Thy fears and thy powers, thy fortunes of loss 

and of gain, 
The beauty, the terror, that fall to thy part, 
The ache and the infinite joy of thy heart ; 
And with sun and with stars newly plucked from 

the heaven, 
With lilies and rainbows, with gems from the mine, 
And jewels of spray of the sea. These are thine 
If thou knowest to look and to grasp and to weave. 
And, thy garment once woven 
Full strong in its tissue and shiningly bright, 
Whatever thou showest in song it shall leave 
In the life of the listener an echo of light. 



THE POET 123 

He shall cry, 

"A new man, a new heart, 
A soul that can play a soul's part, 
A leader for us who but want to be led, 
From tombs where the dead lie dead, 
Toward heights where the living shall live 
(It is promised) a life better worth 
Thanksgiving to Life than to-day unto many can 

give 
This hoary and vexed yet youthful and eager old 

earth." 

Through the silence of night and the roll 

Of the drums of the difficult day 

Thy voice shall ring clear, and the people will 

hearken and say, 
"Let us follow this guide who has clothed his own 

soul 
With the brightness of morning, the strength of 

the noon, 
The compassion of dusk, the peace of the light 

of the crescent moon." 



THE PLAYER AND HIS VIOLIN 

My little brother, small brown violin, 
How was the soul of singing caged within 
A body of this strange yet gracile mould ? 
How was the shape so wondrously surmised, 
As with a wizardry of art devised, 
To capture and to hold 
A spirit of such wild and free 
Divinity ? 

Not laws to parse and tabulate are they 
That dictate thus the unalterable way 
To safeguard, in a hidden silentness, 
The perfect voice of purest melody — 
To keep it pent yet waiting eagerly 

For the first summoning stress 
Of the right touch, that it may sing 
Its answering. 

Unsolved, we know them only as we know, 
When through the organ-pipes of thunder blow 
Deep blasts of the great cosmic symphony, 
Or hollow conchs of wave and whistles of sleet 
And harps of seashore pines cry out to meet 
The north-wind's reveille — 
As then we know some law enorme 
Shapes the loud storm. 



124 



THE PLAYER AND HIS VIOLIN 125 

Even as its crashing musics are unfurled 
From caverns of the cloudy upper world, 
So from the bosom of this tremulous wood 
Streams the bright vehemence of melodic speech, 
By the same rules awaked, controlled, that teach 
The shining brotherhood 
Of star and sun and satellite 
To choir aright. 

How should we, earth's ephemera, understand ? 
Yet, matching only mortal ear and hand 
Against the archeternal secrecies, 
From nothingness, unholpen and untaught 
By pattern-books of God, we, we, have wrought, 
Meeting his laws' decrees, 
The body of the violin, 

The soul within. 

What matters the impenetrable Why ? 

— Thou waitest, singing shape, and thou and I 

Such strains may breathe as scarcely sound in 

heaven, 
Unless upon its floor of stars there stand, 
Thy incorporeal semblance in his hand, 
Some player that had given 
A voice like thine its rapturous birth 
First here on earth. 



126 THE PLAYER AND HIS VIOLIN 

Come, little brother ! Laid to cheek and chin, 
Give me thy heart-beats, palpitant violin ! 
Never a lover held his true-love's brow 
More lovingly ; never he knew so well 
What a sweet throat may find it meet to tell 
In song as I know now, 
Or had such certainty to hear 
Joy for his ear. 

Thy lover yet thy master, when my hand 
Of throbbing form and spirit takes command, 
Then only flames aloud the slumbering fire. 
Thy master yet thy lover, I must know 
Thine every need and wish ere I can show 
Thou art the heart' s-desire 
Of music's self when it would be 
Pure poesy. 

So doth my touch thy dreaming ardors move 
To utterance of the very soul of love ; 
So the sharp sweetness of the thrilled string 
Stirs in my heart the vision of a face 
That lives within its passionate embrace 
Alone ; and we take wing 
For paradise together, three — 
Thou, I, and she. 



TO HER POET 

Thy singing cannot ever need that I 
Should praise its lessons or its melody, 
And secrets of its birth that I might tell 
Hide in my heart, hide and are covered well. 

Should I to all the world uncover 
What thou, my lover, 

Learned of thy loving and of me, 

And what is dream and imagery — 
The voice of art, 

God-spoken to the poet's heart ? 

Nay, did I try I could not well appraise 
The harvest of our length of summer days, 
Set here thy golden sheaves and yonder mine 
The gold I gathered that it might be thine. 

In all thy pages I discover 
Only, my lover, 

A lore of life and love thy hand 

Learned from two hearts to understand, 
A melody 

God-given as a gift to thee. 



127 



THE SEED AND THE FLOWER 

I have forgotten why it was I laughed ; 

But well I know 
It was because, that idle day, I quaffed 

Such brimming cups of merriment, 

That many days an overflow 

Ran in my finger-tips unspent. 

And so it was I shaped aright 
So gay a Scherzo as my Birch-trees in Sunlight. 

I have forgotten why it was I wept ; 
But I remember 

It was because awhile my pulses kept 
The beat of sorrow, that I found 
For my Sonata, the December, 
Those melodies of yearning sound 
That were so beautiful, you said, 

I must have dreamed them in a dream where Kreis- 
ler played. 

And surely, when that I am dead some day, 
The procreant earth, 

Though all my music be forgot, will say, 
"Here lies what was a tuneful heart, 
And with its aid I brought to birth 



128 



THE SEED AND THE FLOWER 129 

This triumph of my spring-time art, 
Where, to his nest that softly swings, 
The orchard-oriole in the blossoming cherry sings." 

For K.M. 
igio. 



IN MEMORIAM 



MY HOUSE 

(R. W. G., November, 1909.) 

Here in this house I raised anew 

The pillars of my home, and round their base 

That cincture of the spirit drew 

Which sayeth, "This shall be my own, my place 

Of safety, quietness, and ease, 

Wherein, at peace, 

My soul shall make its quest 

For the soul's good and the heart's best." 

Old was the house, yet new to me and mine — 

our ways 
Led not unto its gate in other days ; 
Only an empty spaciousness awaited me, 
Unwarmed, untapestried, of wont or memory. 
But friendly stores I brought 
Of things inanimate that take 
With lengthened habitude a semblant life, and 

make 
Chambers of use and charm from alien vacancy ; 
133 



i 3 4 MY HOUSE 

And feet there lacked not that in friendship sought 
My threshold, nor loved eyes and voices to desire 
The happy voice and radiance of my fire. 

And here I lived content. Yet when I sat alone, 

Or trod the twilit stair, or from my bed 

Watched how the winter dawning shone, 

Something I missed that I had known 

Of blessedness beneath another roof : 

It seemed they held sometimes aloof, 

The dear, accustomed, necessary dead, 

Who walk, half-felt, beside our daily steps and 

keep, 
Almost perceived and almost audible, 
Such vigil by our pillow that we stay from sleep 
Lest dreaming dreams be not so full 
Of dreamed tenderness. 
My heart-beats knew them still, my inward ear 

still heard 
The low nocturnal word, 
And, through the daytime sound and stress, 
The faint companionable tread ; 
But not so oft, ah, not so oft or clearly well 
As in those walls where we had used to dwell ; 
For the beloved and loving dead 
(Or so say our immeasurable desires) 
Seeking the souls they need 



MY HOUSE 135 

On dim and wavering paths, find oftenest those 

that lead 
To the known roof-tree, the old lights and fires. 

In this my house surely there did befall, 

A-many times ere it was mine, the ecstasies 

Of sacred joys and agonies, 

Bridal and birth and burial ; 

And gentle spirits of that time must come and go — 

Yet not for me, yet not for me to know ! 

Strangers, they seek their own; nor could they 

guide to me 
My own from paradise's far immensity. 
But, friend who chose, unwittingly, 
This house to be thy last, thy visible last, 
Abode, and from its harboring passed 
To the invisible haven of the after-death, 
Dear friend, thy coming and thy faring-forth 
Have warmed, have vivified, these mute indifferent 

walls, 
Filling them with the passionate breath 
Of heart to yearning heart that calls, 
With deep vitalities of love and pain. 
— Is it for this alone they come again, 
My best-beloved, to pillow and to hearth 
As they were wont to come, 
Frequent and close as to their long-familiar home ? 



136 MY HOUSE 

Or has thy far-flown spirit given 

New sign of the old amity from the paths of 

heaven ? 
Does the affection that so long a while 
Endured between my dead 
And thee and me illume, as with thy voice and 

smile, 
The far mysterious track 
Their homing feet must tread ? 
They know, thou knowest, the incommunicable 

way. 
I know, I only know, that in this day 
Of grief I yet am glad, for thou hast led them 

back. 

And where we sat together, by my fire, 

For thy last hours 

Of heard and answered converse, heart's desire 

Shall find thee too when evening grows 

To deep tranquillity, and vesper flowers — 

Remembrance, love, and gratitude — unclose. 



SAY NOT THOU ART CONTENT 

Stand upright in the silence, soul, to bear 
Thy burden undismayed ; cry not 

It is too heavy ; take up thy great share 
Of the world's great anguish as thy lot 

Predestined from the dawn of days ; so fill 

Thy veins with fortitude ; accept ; be still. 

But say not, soul, say not thou art content ; 

Strive not for any will to say 
As so it is, so best. Make no lament, 

Walk proudly, but call not the way, 
Cruel beneath thy feet, dim to thy sight, 
Better than paths of grass and shining light. 

Sin not as they who, though it cut young grain, 

Aver the scythe beneficent, 
As they who in the darkness of wild rain 

Preach heaven's high blue less excellent. 
Blaspheme not thus the life he would have led, 
Or thy deep need of him, too early dead. 



137. 



HIS GRAVE WHO LOVED THE SEA 

(1894) 

Lie here, lie here ! The dogwood-tree 
That spreads above these graves, 
Not far, not far away can see, 
On paths of shining waves, 
The coastwise sails pass to and fro, 
And outward the great steamers go 
With smoky pennants of farewell. 

In this green shadowy spot, 
Where pain and restlessness are not, 
And sorrow ne'er befell, 
Thy fathers sleep. 
Here is a cabin, strait like theirs and deep. 
Here thou shalt dwell, 
And thy dear form shall be 
Companioned by the sea's fidelity. 

Lie still and dream in this safe bourn of ours. 

The sun that strikes upon the turf 
Through whitening screen of dogwood flowers, 

A mile away strikes whitening surf; 
It draws in autumn from the ocean's breast 
The rain that falls upon thy place of rest 

Through reddening dogwood leaves, 

138 



HIS GRAVE WHO LOVED THE SEA 139 

In winter-time the hail and snow- 
That bend the naked branches low. 
The blast that sobs and grieves 
Amid the raindrops and the hail, 
Speaks the wild words of an Atlantic gale ; 

When it has passed, 
The gladder winds, that whistle and that sing, 
A greeting to thy peaceful harbor bring 
From rushing keel and bending mast 
Wet with Atlantic spray. 

Here day by day 
The breezes and the blasts will bring to thee 
Sounds of the farther and the farthest sea : 
Lie quiet, listen, and thy dreaming ear 

The loud salute shall hear 
Of tangled surf on boreal rock and sand, 
Of rhythmic, cadenced surf on tropic strand ; 

From distant waves will come the cry 

Of curlew and of petrel ; nearer by, 
Beach-birds will call to thee ; and overhead, 

On slanted wing above thy bed', 

The gull will be thy messenger. 
From her 
Of sunset and of sunrise thou shalt know ; 
The wild-fowl, migrant, their report will bring 
Of north, of south, in autumn and in spring, 



140 HIS GRAVE WHO LOVED THE SEA 

Of coming and of going of the snow ; 

And every wandering air will yield 
The faint fresh scent from shore-side field 
And bordering thicket near the tall beach-grass ■ 

The breath of clover-blows, 
Of swamp-azalea and the meadow-rose, 
Sweet-fern and bayberry and sassafras, 
Of sun-warmed savin-tree and pine, 
And, delicate, divine, 
The sweet, sweet, airy wine 
From blossoms of the vagrant grape. 

So sleeping, dearest, thou shalt shape 
Within thy narrow home 

Dream-tales of happiness to last 
Until the round world's voyaging is past ; 

For thy dear dust, who loved the sea, 
Companioned by its messengers shall be 

Until the warm earth groweth numb, 
And the recurrent tides of time become 

Immobile oceans of eternity. 



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